{"id":483333,"date":"2026-10-03T00:54:07","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T00:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/483333\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T00:54:07","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T00:54:07","slug":"san-pedro-red-cars-could-become-temporary-museum-attractions-press-telegram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/483333\/","title":{"rendered":"San Pedro Red Cars could become temporary museum attractions \u2013 Press Telegram"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/p>\n

A San Pedro line Red Car sits on the tracks near 14th and Beacon streets in 1911. (USC Digital Library, California Historical Society collection)\n<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A restored Pacific Electric Red Car runs along San Pedro\u2019s waterfront. The revived trains ran between 2003 and 2015. Undated, circa early 2000s. (Daily Breeze staff file photo)\n<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Red Car rail line when it ran along San Pedro\u2019s waterfront from the cruise ship terminal to 22nd Street in 2007. (Daily Breeze Archive)\n<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Red Car rail line when it ran along San Pedro\u2019s waterfront from the cruise ship terminal to 22nd Street in 2007. (Daily Breeze Archive)\n<\/p>\n

\"File<\/p>\n

File photo of a much-loved historic Red Car running along San Pedro\u2019s waterfront. in 2015. (Photo by Chuck Bennett, Staff Photographer)\n<\/p>\n

\"This<\/p>\n

This photo from the Orange County Archives shows a Pacific Electric \u201cRed Car\u201d southbound on San Pedro Street in Los Angeles that would have been headed to Orange County. (Courtesy of the Orange County Archives)\n<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

An arched counter space inside the Walker\u2019s Cafe building in San Pedro is believed to be a former Red Car ticket window. (Courtesy San Pedro Bay Historical Society)\n<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The much-loved historic Red Car running along San Pedro\u2019s waterfront. (Daily Breeze Archive)\n<\/p>\n

Show Caption<\/p>\n

1 of 8<\/p>\n

A San Pedro line Red Car sits on the tracks near 14th and Beacon streets in 1911. (USC Digital Library, California Historical Society collection)\n<\/p>\n

Expand<\/a><\/p>\n

For about a decade in the early 2000s, the quaint sounds of clattering wheels on railroad tracks and the periodic blast of an E-flat horn was common place on San Pedro\u2019s waterfront \u2014 as it was in generations past throughout Los Angeles, when electric track routes crisscrossed the growing metropolis from 1901 to 1961.<\/p>\n

The Port of Los Angeles\u2019 mission to re-create a small slice of L.A.\u2019s beloved Red Car era drew plenty of nostalgia during the 12 years its vintage Red Carr ran back and forth along Harbor Boulevard. It opened in 2003 and closed in 2015.<\/p>\n

Those Red Cars have sat in storage ever since \u2014 but perhaps not for much longer. There\u2019s currently a proposal to loan those vehicles to museums.<\/p>\n

Red Cars ran throughout Los Angeles<\/a> back in the day, including in and around San Pedro.<\/p>\n

But just as L.A.\u2019s Red Cars faded with time and progress, so San Pedro\u2019s 1.7-mile-long slice of that re-creation fell victim to changes as well.<\/p>\n

These days, a faster and more efficient light rail system is being constructed throughout L.A., but the charm of the early Red Cars endures.<\/p>\n

San Pedro\u2019s short replica line<\/a>, in the end, wasn\u2019t sustainable, however,.<\/p>\n

It was shut down when discussions for a revamped waterfront \u2014 and a Harbor Boulevard realignment \u2014 began taking center stage.<\/p>\n

The line also proved expensive for the port to maintain and was not well used over time by cruise passengers as was hoped. It also could not be expanded safely onto other streets \u2014 a desire that many had for the trolleys to be routed through the historic downtown district \u2014 that were simply too narrow. The cars also posed regulatory and safety issues because they traveled high off the ground and required elevated boarding structures for today\u2019s passengers.<\/p>\n

So the cars (one restored original and two replicas) came to a permanent stop and were moved into storage at the south end of town.<\/p>\n

Now, a plan has surfaced to loan the cars out to nearby museums as displays where they can at least be seen by the public.<\/p>\n

Those plans are tentatively set to be presented to the Los Angeles harbor commission on Thursday, Oct. 8. A vote would likely come at a follow-up meeting later in October.<\/p>\n

Under the proposal, the original and restored \u201c1058\u201d Red Car will go to the Southern California Railway Museum in Perris,<\/a> with the two replicas being loaned, respectively, to the Travel Town Museum in Griffith Park<\/a> under the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, and to the Lomita Railroad Museum<\/a> in the city of Lomita.<\/p>\n

All of the museums \u201care very happy and promise take good care of them,\u201d said Augie Bezmalinovich, the port\u2019s San Pedro community affairs advocate.<\/p>\n

Bob Henry, the port\u2019s former legislative representative, shepherded the creation of POLA\u2019s Red Car re-creation project on the waterfront for years.<\/p>\n

Henry, now retired, said the plan to loan the long-stored, heavy-duty rail cars out where they can be seen and appreciated \u201cwas an excellent idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had the right people at the right time,\u201d Henry said of the original project.<\/p>\n

Once suggested, the idea was embraced and launched by an earlier port administration during the council term of Rudy Svorinich Jr. Carpenters and other specialty workers were recruited and the original car was painstakingly restored while the wood replicas \u2014 including all the details and rounded corners of the originals \u2014 were also completed.<\/p>\n

It all cost more than the originally projected $10 million, Henry said, but was an effort that brought joy and is still talked about among port workers who were involved.<\/p>\n

Some have hoped the Red Cars could be brought back<\/a> for transportation in an encore appearance in the port town, but the challenges were too many.<\/p>\n

Ideas have been kicked around for how the stored cars could possibly be repurposed as stationary attractions along the waterfront, Bezmalinovich said.\u00a0Some ideas have included using them as a stationary coffee or food carts, possibly at the new West Harbor site.<\/p>\n

But none has panned out as workable because of the cars\u2019 narrow interiors, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re narrow and tiny (inside),\u201d Bezmalinovich said of the retro trolley cars. Reconfiguring them would destroy them, he said.<\/p>\n

Still, many people wanted to see them kept local. But exterior space on the waterfront or other areas even for a static display seemed unfeasible, he said, adding that both West Harbor and Crafted at the Port of Los Angeles were approached.<\/p>\n

The best option remaining, he said, was to loan them to reputable museums that could handle the large cars and where they\u2019d be seen and appreciated by the public.<\/p>\n

The Red Car re-creations, after all, brought joy, Henry said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was tough in a way, but we knew things were going to change down there,\u201d he said of the project\u2019s end. \u201cI rationalized that my job was to build it \u2014 and I built it. That was the thing we were proud of; everything after that could not be controlled.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A San Pedro line Red Car sits on the tracks near 14th and Beacon streets in 1911. (USC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[7,610,4064,131,133,132,47,137,100,172,1438,612,1439],"class_list":["post-483333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-california","tag-inland-empire","tag-local-history","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-county","tag-news","tag-perris","tag-port-of-los-angeles","tag-riverside-county","tag-san-pedro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}